Charlotte Hays, Author at Independent Women's Network

Heroes Foil Hijacking. Israeli Plumber One of the Valiant. Legacy of Flight 93 Hailed. U.S. Economy Takes Off. But Is It Too Late for Midterms? Miranda Devine on Cornell 7. And More

Posted on October 1, 2026October 1, 2026 by Charlotte Hays

We’re going to hear the word hero a lot today.

And thank heavens for the “Heroes in the Sky,” who foiled the attempted hijacking of a Dubai airplane en route from Dubai to Tel Aviv, saving the lives of 174 passengers.

This, from Jonathan Sacerdoti of the London Spectator:

The heroes who saved the flydubai flight from disaster a flydubai flight from Dubai to Tel Aviv appears to have been hijacked by its own co-pilot. It ended with the plane on the ground in Tabuk, Saudi Arabia, and all 174 passengers alive, among them 27 children and many Israelis. Very little has been officially confirmed. But what we do know points to a potentially massive disaster that was averted, thanks to the bravery of Israeli passengers and members of the crew. …

If the early indications are right, this morning a pilot tried to turn a passenger jet into a weapon on a route that stands for that new relationship. He was stopped by ordinary passengers who ran toward the danger instead of away from it, and by a crew who happened to be in the right place at the right time. We came very close to a very different headline today.

The grievously wounded captain managed to open the cockpit so passengers could swarm in and subdue the treacherous co-pilot. The Wall Street Journal reports on the cockpit stabbing and terrifying nosedive. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu credits an Israeli plumber for “preventing another 9/11.” Passengers further recalled the plane’s drastic, stomach-churning plunge. The Free Press profiles one of the heroes in “‘I Ran Toward the Cockpit’: An Exclusive Interview with the Israeli Dad Who Stopped a Hijacking.” An editorial in the Wall Street Journal ties this to the legacy of the “spirit” of Flight 93 25 years ago in September 11:

The threat from Islamic terrorism isn’t over. But on their way home to Israel at last, survivors of the hijacking could be seen on video breaking into an old Jewish song: “The whole entire world is a very narrow bridge / and the main thing—is to have no fear at all.”

Don’t miss “The Hero Who Stopped Israel’s 9/11” in the U.K. Telegraph.

“The U.S. Economy Is Accelerating” is the headline on a Wall Street Journal editorial. The editors write:

You’d be forgiven for thinking the U.S. is slouching toward recession based on the gloomy headlines. But cheer up—the Commerce Department on Wednesday made an unusually large upward revision in its economic growth estimate for the first half of the year. Might rising yields on the 10-year Treasury reflect accelerating economic growth? …

The larger story here is that the economy as a whole looks to be on a stronger footing than during the Biden years when growth was driven by government handouts. Recall how the Biden team boasted that its climate spending was increasing construction and even defended its endless student loan forbearance as propping up consumer spending.

Mark Skousen writes that gross output signals an economic surge. In his Best-of-the-Web column, James Freeman observes that the U.S. economy is better than was previously reported. I know what you’re thinking. Does any of this help Republicans, or are the midterm results already baked into the pie? Victor Davis Hanson had a piece recently about what he called the “false gloom” about the economy that defeated George H.W. Bush and elected Bill Clinton.

Karl Rove’s column this morning does not radiate hope for the GOP’s electoral prospects. Headlined “A Blundering 2026 Midterm Campaign,” the column suggests that the Republican campaign strategy looks good on paper but suffers from subpar execution:

Messaging is one of the few areas of Team Trump’s execution we can judge in real time. The past month it’s been awful.

Especially given Mr. Trump’s poor approval numbers, he has to drive home each day what the GOP has accomplished and will accomplish—and clearly contrast that with what Democrats believe and promise. Instead, we’ve gotten off-putting confusion.

“How many House seats will the Democrats win? The polls may already know,” is Henry Olsen’s Washington Post headline. Olsen writes:

This week, I set about reverse engineering the past three midterms using generic congressional ballot polling. I expected the analysis to be fruitful, but even I was surprised by just how predictive it turned out to be. Applying the same model to the election before us renders this verdict: a Democratic majority of at least 225 seats and as many as 232.

So many commentators are off and running. We should wait for more information in the complicated case of the Cornell rape accusations. “The lynch mob is out for the ‘Cornell 7’ — proving we’ve learned nothing from past injustices,” Miranda Devine cautions. She writes:

The “Cornell 7” gang rape case is descending into the same lynch-mob hysteria as the notorious Duke lacrosse or “mattress girl” hoaxes of old — only with social media making everything worse.

It seems we have learned nothing from past injustices.

A young woman who goes by “Jane Doe” has filed a civil lawsuit two years after she alleged she was gang-raped by seven men in a sordid, drug-fueled sexual encounter at the Chi Phi fraternity house at the elite Cornell University, where she was a student at the time.

Predictably, the fraternity brothers have been judged guilty in the court of man-hating public opinion.

Yet, according to Tompkins County District Attorney Matthew Van Houten, citing Doe’s sworn statement to campus investigators in November 2024, she “described her participation in drug use and sexual conduct as voluntary, conscious and consensual.” When she told the young men to stop, they did.

In “The Moral Wilderness of the Cornell Seven Case,” National Review’s Dan McLaughlin writes:

Moral panics are not always bad. Sometimes, they represent an overdue societal correction against some entrenched injustice. But they are always dangerous, and we should always have a clear head about the fact that we are in one. So it is with the “Cornell Seven” case. …

“Jane Doe,” the thus-far anonymous alleged victim, now says that she was raped on October 19–20, 2024, by seven members of the same fraternity at Cornell, where she was a 20-year-old junior. The central issue in every rape case has to be this one: Did he do it? The surrounding facts may show aggravating or mitigating factors; they may or may not tell us bad things about the victim or other possible accomplices or bystanders. But the essential question has to come first: Did he rape her? If so, he’s a violent criminal and should be treated by the law and society like any other predatory felon. If not, we’re not dealing with a rape.

Of course, a non-rape can still be many sorts of morally dreadful behavior, but it doesn’t become rape just by the application of hot rhetoric. Sadly, after decades of assaults by progressives and feminists on traditional moral frameworks and rules, we don’t really have a coherent language to deal with immoral sexual behavior that doesn’t cross the line into crime. We’d be in a better place if we had those sorts of standards. It’s hard to teach your sons, or your daughters for that matter, moral rules if you treat the whole idea of moral rules with contempt.

Dangerous Women. Moms for Liberty co-founder Tina Descovich is warning parents about the radical content of Ms. Rachel’s kiddie shows. “Not Mr. Rogers,” says Descovich. … The “‘Palestinian Rachel Dolezal’ Scandal Isn’t What You Think.” Take her and what she represents seriously, says City Journal.

Genius Day at White House. The AI ‘Constitution.’ How Not to Get Deported to Uganda. Rape Accusations at Cornell. Elliot Page Bares ‘His’ Mastectomy Scars for Men’s Fashion Spread. More

Posted on September 30, 2026September 30, 2026 by Charlotte Hays

Guess who got invited to lunch at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue yesterday?

Just about everybody who’s anybody in the AI world. Real Clear Politics dubs the event “AI Day at the White House“:

It was AI Day in Washington on Tuesday, with the Trump administration hosting an all-day conference and the launch of a new AI landing page. Donald Trump lunched with executives before signing an executive order directing the government to start calling AI “super intelligence” instead. Between red tape updates, rebranding, and wrangling corporations, the president hopes to turn the tide of public opinion.

In a spontaneous gaggle with reporters at the White House, Trump declared that his lunch guests had all signed onto an accord to add guardrails on AI technology. He described it as a “constitution,” “a joint commitment,” a “statement of principles,” and “morally binding.”

Axios has a skeptical slant on the AI “constitution” but is still worth reading.

Hey, what about your soul? UnHerd has an article with the intriguing headline “AI Versus the Human Soul.”

There’s a foolproof way to avoid being stranded in some alien spot on the globe, say Uganda: Simply don’t come to the United States illegally. It’s that easy.

No doubt, however, the Supreme Court’s ruling yesterday that third-country deportations can continue for now will raise a hue and cry. Here’s the gist of what the Court said:

The Trump administration can resume deporting certain migrants to countries where they are not citizens for the time being, while the justices hear arguments and make a final ruling on the policy, a divided Supreme Court ruled Tuesday.

The ruling is a temporary victory for a centerpiece of President Donald Trump’s mass deportation agenda and sets up a major Supreme Court argument in December over the controversial policy.

“Maryland Man Hardest Hit” is Powerline’s take on the ruling. “Maryland Man,” as you no doubt know, is a Salvadoran gangbanger, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the original bad penny of deportations. Meanwhile, Mark Krikorian of the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) writes about “Immigration Enforcement Without the Melodrama.” ICE, Krikorian argues, is getting the job done—but very quietly:

The intentionally provocative approach of ousted DHS Secretary Kristi Noem and her field commander, Border Patrol agent Greg Bovino, was thrilling for the more excitable elements on both the Right and the Left. One side wanted revenge for Biden’s and DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas’s truly lawless and harmful border policies, while the anti-borders side was practically giddy with euphoria at having their fantasies of impending fascism seemingly confirmed.

Krikorian also has fascinating and encouraging data on the population. It may not be as big as we think.

“A Firestorm Over Rape Allegations Threatens to Engulf Cornell” is a Wall Street Journal report on the confusing situation at the Ivy League school:

In 2024, a Cornell University student went to campus police after being drugged and gang-raped by fraternity members, a lawsuit alleges. Local prosecutors decided not to press charges, believing she hadn’t alleged any criminal behavior.

Now, two years later, controversy over the handling of the case has erupted, throwing the Ivy League school into crisis. …

On Sunday, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.) denounced the school’s “culture of rape.”

If you are at all interested in this perplexing and important case, I urge you to read both CBS’s police transcript of the original 2024 interview with Jane Doe and the Free Press account by Kat Rosenfield headlined “The ‘Cornell 7’ Have Not Been Proven Guilty.” Here is the Free Press subhead:

A handful of former frat bros were accused of a horrific crime. The court of public opinion has already punished them.

More Legal News. “Lindsay Clancy’s Lawyer Makes Stunning U-Turn on Who Killed the Kids.” Huh? Shouldn’t he have mentioned this in the trial? Lawyer Kevin Reddington, you’ll recall, tried to get Ms. Clancy off by arguing insanity, not that she didn’t do it.

News Flash: “The Strait of Hormuz Is Open.” That’s a Free Press headline on an Aaron MacLean article. Here’s the subhead:

Oil is once again moving through the strait. Can the Trump administration turn a winning Iran strategy into lasting victory?

Meanwhile, motorcycle patrols are swarming Iranian cities, and checkpoints are being established as the regime braces for unrest:

The security buildup comes as university students have returned to the streets in Tehran, protesting compulsory hijab rules, rising education costs and political repression, videos published on Iran International show.

Midterms. The Democrats are running on “affordability.” Say what? “The ‘Affordability’ Democrats? You Have to Be Kidding” is the headline on a Wall Street Journal editorial. The editors point out ways in which Dem policies would lead to higher prices:

It costs on average about 2.8 times as much to build an apartment in California as in Texas, according to the RAND Corp. Some “affordable” housing projects in the Golden State cost more than $1 million per unit to build. One reason is state and local prevailing wage mandates, which Democrats want to require for all projects that benefit from federal funds.

Democrats also want to raise the $7.25 an hour federal minimum wage to $15 or higher. Most Democratic-run states already impose minimum wages of at least $15 an hour, so this would mainly slam states with lower wage mandates, many of which have contested Senate races this year like Texas, Iowa and New Hampshire (all $7.25) and Ohio ($11). Businesses pass on higher wage costs to consumers to the extent they can.

So what are Democrats now proposing to improve affordability? More of the same policies—more spending on welfare and “affordable” housing, more green-energy subsidies, more healthcare regulation and higher minimum wages nationwide.

Democrats claimed the Affordable Care Act would reduce healthcare costs. But that law’s command-and-control regulations drove industry consolidation and pushed up prices instead. Premiums for employer plans have roughly doubled since 2010, rising at about twice the rate of inflation.

A new Wall Street Journal poll suggests that voters want contradictory things. “Americans Want Populist Policies That Defy Traditional Political Labels“:

Americans in both parties back government-imposed price caps and other market interventions to make life more affordable, suggesting new support for populist ideas that were once largely outside the political mainstream.

That’s the takeaway of a new Wall Street Journal survey that asked respondents what they want from their elected officials and the political system. Voters of all partisan stripes strongly support capping the cost of prescription drugs, child care and credit-card interest rates.

The survey suggests that a coalition reaching beyond the nation’s familiar party labels exists for a range of policies at a time when Americans view Republicans and Democrats negatively.

Large majorities, for example, support both strong border security and a pathway to citizenship for many people in the country illegally, the poll finds. A near-majority of Democrats agrees with Republicans and independent voters that people should show a photo ID when balloting to ensure that only citizens vote.

Elliot Page—formerly Ellen Page—made the cover of New York Magazine’s “Men’s Style” issue. It was supposed to be bold, but it was sad:

The issue featured multiple covers, including one with Page, and linked to an article headlined “The Boys in the Baths.” The magazine described the piece as “Shvitzing and kibitzing with some of New York’s most stylish men at the East Village’s Russian & Turkish Baths.”

Page was among numerous others featured largely unclothed and described the bathhouse experience.

“I went to a bathhouse recently. I’ve only in the past couple of years been like, ‘Yeah, that sounds nice, to like go somewhere and sit around in your body like that.’ I do sing in the shower sometimes,” Page said. “The same songs and lyrics will get stuck in my head, and I don’t know why. Like ‘Do you believe in life after love?’ That’s one I’ll belt out. Or ‘The Sound of Music’: I’ve never seen the movie, which seems crazy, but for some reason I find myself belting out that song in the shower. I can’t explain it.”

The scars from Page’s double mastectomy were prominently visible in the cover photo.

The BBC has decreed that getting a manicure but not having nail polish applied is white supremacy. The Wall Street Journal’s Meghan Gurdon writes:

That line about “perpetuating white supremacy” is tedious, but it is the faux profundity of “who gets to decide” that marks the whole piece as risible and about as on-trend as a polyester leisure suit. It’s so . . . six years ago.

Failed Education Experiment: Nikole Hannah-Jones Still Doesn’t Get It. President Trump to Address UN. Preparing for Xi. GOP: Some Good Local News. Inside a Baby Citizenship Factory. More

Posted on September 22, 2026September 22, 2026 by Charlotte Hays

Yes, big doings at the UN today.

We’ll get to that. But the buzz-producing story this morning is the continued fallout from 1619 author Nikole Hannah-Jones’ agonizing Sunday New York Times article on educational choices she made for her daughter.

Headlined “Choosing a School for My Daughter in a Segregated City,” Ms. Hannah-Jones’ article today made the cover of the New York Post, quite an achievement. Emblazoned on the cover: “Husband of New York Times writer says she’s like MLK Jr. for ‘sacrificing’ their daughter to terrible New York school.”

Unlike her father, the couple’s daughter, Najya, is not so complimentary about the choice; she is depicted as being angry about the lack of opportunity in her chaotic and failing school

“Lessons from Nikole Hannah-Jones’ School Experiment” is the headline at The Free Press’ lead story. Subtitle: “The creator of the 1619 Project sent her young daughter to a struggling public school, convinced that upper-middle-class parents could lift it up. A decade later, the results are in.” While the results of the experiment were not so hot, Coleman Hughes suggests that it is unfair to pile on harsh criticism of Hannah-Jones:

At the time, Hannah-Jones’ rationale was that bad schools are caused by a lack of upper-middle-class parents. Those parents, she argued, have the resources and connections to lobby on behalf of the entire student body (including poorer students from dysfunctional families), raise additional funding, and generally improve the quality of the education for all. As an upper-middle-class parent herself, Hannah-Jones … felt she had an obligation to be part of the solution, which meant sending Najya to a bad school. On the progressive left, her experiment read as noble. To everyone else, it was madness.”

Okay. That was then. This is now. How well did Hannah-Jones learn from the experiment? Not so well, according to a New York Post editorial:

Time and again in her essay, she falls back on the beliefs she started with: The schools are under-resourced; “a system of inequality” that stems from “outside the school walls but is magnified within them” makes change near-impossible.

This is why Hannah-Jones’ “1619 Project” had so many gross factual errors: She’s blinded by ideology.

In the Wall Street Journal’s Free Expression section, Matthew Hennessey writes about “The Oblation of Nikole Hannah-Jones.” Rich Lowry addresses how Hannah-Jones’ “perverse priorities [led her to] put her cause before her child.” Well, at least the wicked 1619 Jamestowners never practiced child sacrifice.

President Trump addresses the United Nations today:

Mike Waltz, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, told reporters the president’s speech will focus on “how he has, and his administration have, confronted complex problems head-on around the world” when past administrations “kicked the can” down the road. Waltz said the president will talk about ensuring that Iran won’t have a nuclear weapon, and will give an update on progress on the Gaza peace plan implementation.

But will we hear the speech? In response to the White House’s ban on CNN, MS NOW, and Politico, five networks (ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox and NBC) have suspended the press pool that ordinarily covers presidential events. More on the media boycott. Trump is also expected to speak about a much-needed UN overhaul.

We will also see (press pool willing?) a state visit by China’s President Xi, who will be afforded a state dinner. Semafor’s Andy Browne writes that the meeting between Trump and Xi “won’t break the US-China stalemate.” Trump and Xi will discuss AI. Walter Russell Mead explores what AI means for Xi:

The arrival of the internet led many in the West to predict the fall of Chinese communism as the torrents of free content on the global web undermined the party’s control of information and empowered individuals….. Thanks to the web, the Chinese government can use an unprecedented network of cameras, centralized information gathering and other forms of surveillance to build the most powerful form of social control the human race has ever seen. The government tracks your purchases, your movements and your online activity and has access to everything from your medical records to your credit information.

This is the template that Beijing’s planners bring to AI. The question is whether it can work….

While the U.S. should seek cooperation with China when it comes to reducing the dangers AI poses to both countries, we have no interest in helping the Communist Party harness the power of AI to cement its increasingly totalitarian hold on Chinese society.

American officials discussing AI with their counterparts should remember that the two governments want different things.

In “Who’s Stronger, Xi or Trump?” Bill McGurn addresses the fate of Jimmy Lai, the heroic Hong Kong newspaper owner who languishes in a Chinese prison. “What Does Trump Want from Xi?” an editorial in The Wall Street Journal, suggests that the president “Start with no more help for Iran to target and kill Americans.”

“Good News for the GOP: Some Politics Is Still Local,” by Matthew Continetti, who sees several hopes for the Republicans, despite national trends favoring Democrats:

Look at each state, however, and it’s a different picture. The list of competitive Senate seats is growing—and not entirely in the Democrats’ favor. The complex scene is a reminder that local problems and individual candidates can matter more than the national environment. The ghost of Tip O’Neill [who famously said that all politics is local] haunts the 2026 election.

Although the last GOP senator from Michigan was elected in 1994, former Rep. Mike Rogers is neck-and-neck with Abdul El-Sayed, the former public health official and pal of anti-American livestreamer Hasan Piker. The Real Clear Politics polling average has Mr. El-Sayed 2 points ahead of Mr. Rogers, well within the margin of error….

The Maine Senate contest was rocked by Democratic nominee Graham Platner’s sudden departure in July. His replacement, Troy Jackson, is Mr. Platner without the charm. Incumbent Susan Collins narrowly trails Mr. Jackson, but his lead is tiny and Ms. Collins has outperformed polling before.

The most unexpected polling comes from Minnesota, which hasn’t elected a GOP senator since 2002. Yet recent Senate polls show Republican Michele Tafoya, a former NFL sideline reporter, close behind Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan.

Meanwhile, Chadwick Moore introduces us to the “US Army vet running a California baby factory for Chinese nationals to have American kids“:

Wealthy Chinese couples are implanting their embryos into American women so their children can be born as US citizens, The Post has learned.

The service is provided by a surrogacy agency, Patriot Conceptions, which operates between China and the US and has been accused of hiding details of who the biological parents are from surrogates….

Patriot Conceptions is run by a high-energy US Army vet named Haotian Bai — who founded the international surrogacy agency and last year received a prestigious fellowship from a top Republican think tank, which describes him as a “pioneering entrepreneur in the third-party reproduction” sector.

Ms. Must tends to regard AI hysteria as—well—hysteria. But to be fair, I want to note that the estimable Alex Berenson has a piece at The Free Press headlined “I Didn’t Fall for Covid Fearmongering. But AI Terrifies Me.” Subtitle:

At first, I was skeptical that AI posed a grave danger to humanity. I now believe the White House, the U.S., and the world must move forcefully to reduce the risks of AI. Here’s what changed.

A Few for the Road. “The Lion, the Witch and the Gender-Swap“: Greta Gerwig’s forthcoming movie is a remake of C.S. Lewis’s classic “Narnia” stories for children. Spencer Klaven warns that the movie betrays the source by making the Christ figure a woman. … Gerard Bajer of the Wall Street Journal warns that he feels a bad case of TDS coming on. … After a pleasant chat with President Trump, New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani renews his call for Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, in town for the U.S. meeting, to be arrested as a “war criminal.” Fortunately, he lacks the power to do this.

Ms. Must is off for a week in New Orleans. See you back here September 30^th.

Greenland Deal. Media Outlets Banned from White House. Billionaires Touting Apocalypse: What Do They Really Want? ’60 Minutes’: Pat Clancy Held Callan’s Hand As He Died. 1619 Mom Sends Her Kid to Crummy School. More

Posted on September 21, 2026September 21, 2026 by Charlotte Hays

Wow!

President Trump scored a huge Greenland deal that nets pretty much everything he wanted. What’s more, he didn’t have to rename a single one of Greenland’s fabled icy mountains. So far.

An op-ed in the Wall Street Journal (“Trump Scores a Win in Greenland“) starts a few perfunctory harumphs over Trump’s antics, but doesn’t minimize what the Greenland deal, announced Friday, means for U.S. national security:

More important, it resolves a security challenge that has bedeviled American presidents since the 1860s and, in the process, strengthens the U.S. and European position in the Arctic in the face of Russian and Chinese ambitions.

While additional details are needed, the outline of Friday’s deal among the U.S., Denmark and Greenland solves the most pertinent security issues…. Mr. Trump has improved on the work of presidents from Andrew Johnson to Harry S. Truman, who sought to improve the U.S. security position in the High North from the great-power adversaries of their eras.

The agreement opens the door to investments from U.S. companies and bans any military bases from non-NATO countries in Greenland. Barrons calls the deal a triple win:

A new Greenland security deal gives President Donald Trump a triple win: smoother relations with the European Union, stronger Arctic security, and potential access to massive mineral reserves. Actually, extracting those resources won’t be simple,

The situation in Iran is a bit more up in the air (literally?) with President Trump reportedly “considering ‘blowing up entire nation’ of Iran“:

The US president also suggested he could “let them rot economically”, as Tehran is squeezed by a naval blockade, or strike a peace deal.

Iran on Sunday said it was preparing for possible air strikes and threatened to retaliate. US embassies and the US state department issued security alerts this weekend amid fighting between Saudi Arabia and Yemen’s Houthis.

While Iran threatens to “expand the geography of the war,” a story in the Jerusalem Post quotes Iran’s exiled Crown Prince Reza Pahlevi, who has secret channels to people in Iran, telling a rally that Iran is seeing quiet but significant defections from its military and civilian establishment.

Meanwhile, shipments getting through Hormuz are at a six-month high, and the stock market responded positively early this morning.

President Trump took to Truth Social to announce that he is banning CNN, MS NOW, and Politico from the White House. The three media outlets are suing to restore access. George Washington University law professor and Fox Contributor Jonathan Turley takes a dim view of the White House ban:

I have previously expressed my disappointment with the ban. While I have been one of the most vocal critics of biased coverage on these outlets, I view this as an ill-considered, damaging move. Putting aside the constitutional concerns, it is a policy that undermines core values and traditions related to the free press.

The revamped (by Bari Weiss) “60 Minutes” scored a big “get” last night with Ross Douthat’s sensitive interview of Patrick Clancy, whose ex-wife Lindsay Clancy trial for killing the couple’s three children ended in a hung jury. Clancy is now remarried, and he and his new wife are expecting a child. Eight-month-old Callan was found alive and lingered for four days before dying in his father’s arms. Lindsay Clancy never asked for forgiveness, but Patrick says he gave it to her. I wonder how you ask forgiveness for killing three small children—and how you give it.

“Beware of Billionaires Touting the Apocalypse” is the headline on a London Spectator story. Geoffrey Cain writes that the billionaires are modern Cassandras—with one lamentable twist:

The kingdom of artificial intelligence is now producing a stream of its own Cassandras. On September 8, a 27-year-old AI researcher named Jacob Coxon quit Anthropic – and explained why on X. The company and its rival OpenAI, where he had also worked, were “racing straight to self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives.” By breakfast, tens of millions of people had seen his post.

But in the Silicon Valley version of Troy, there’s a twist to the Cassandra story. Instead of ignoring the Cassandras, the elders hear them out, agree with every word, then… wheel the horse in through the gates, right on schedule.

Meanwhile, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, a tech billionaire not touting the apocalypse, argues that the ones who do are really trying to sidestep existing regulations. No fun at all, Mr. Huang further argues that there’s a “0% chance” AI will end the world by 2030. In “A Doomsday Scenario for American AI,” Tyler Cowen argues, “The U.S. is slouching toward heavy regulation while China is poised to rush ahead. Beijing will then dominate everything from global arms sales to healthcare.”

President Trump, who has so far been resistant to the tech Cassandras, announces the formation of an “AI Force,” modeled on the Space Force, for AI oversight. Axios uses the term, “AI Czar.”

Woke advertising has scored another boo boo. Wait until you get a load of the latest high end Converse sneakers ad:

The ad, which has been removed from the Nike subsidiary’s social media pages, featured K-pop singer Karina of the girl group aespa promoting the Chuck 70 X and Run Star Crush sneakers. In the ad, Karina held a pair of black high-top shoes under a star-shaped spotlight while wearing a long white skirt.

Several social media users asserted that Karina resembled a KKK member, with the shoes resembling a lynching victim. Critics included Rep. Troy Carter, D-La., who released a statement on the ad on Friday.

“Nike and Converse, what the hell were you thinking?” Carter said. “Your campaign shows what looks like a hooded Klansman, framed by what appears to be the dangling feet of a lynching victim. There is nothing creative or artistic about it. It is racist, reckless and deeply offensive.”

After facing backlash, Converse eventually pulled the ad and released a statement apologizing for the campaign.

Nike already has paid a high price for pushing left-wing ads.

We had a lot of stories on the importance of recess way back when Christina Hoff Sommers had just popularized the term “war against boys.” Reducing or eliminating recess was part of the story. But boys and girls need to have recess. City Journal reviews a new book entitled “Why Recess Matters“:

A new book shows how unsupervised play offers children something that increasingly expensive and competitive youth sports can’t provide: some time and space of their own.

Mommie Dearest. “Woke NYT, 1619 Project writer deliberately sent daughter to troubled schools as a ‘sacrifice’ — and it backfired spectacularly“:

The writer behind the New York Times’ controversial 1619 Project deliberately sent her daughter to poor Big Apple schools as a “sacrifice” to try to boost the education system — and no one is angrier than the kid.

The teen is now “boiling” mad — badly behind her peers after finally being allowed to enroll in a more rigorous high school, her mother revealed in a bombshell bizarre essay.

Nikole Hannah-Jones, 50, enrolled her only child in two struggling Brooklyn public schools beginning in 2015 — as part of a battle to change what she characterized as systemic racism, despite having the “connections and time and status” to get the girl into the city’s best schools, she wrote in the Times Magazine on Sunday.

By her own account, Hannah-Jones’ daughter Najya knows she was cheated by her parents.

I don’t know if National Review editor Rich Lowry has kids. But if he does, they will be spared the ordeal of Najya. Lowry loves western civ. Don’t miss his column headline “Book of the year’: How a 12-pound tome can save Western civilization“:

At a time when Western civilization has been successfully “de-centered” in academia and Western civ classes relegated to the dustbin of history, the book is a counter-cultural act.

It’s devoted to the idea that learning about our own civilization should take priority over learning about others, and that we won’t realize why it’s so vital to defend our tradition without first understanding it.

Big Decision on Iran Coming. Much to Dem Chagrin, Hasan Piker Loves to Talk. Byron York on Good Economic News (that You Might Not Have Heard about). Cleta Mitchel: Mother of SAVE. Amusing C of E Incident. More

Posted on September 18, 2026September 18, 2026 by Charlotte Hays

Busy foreign affairs schedule next week for President Trump. There is a meeting with China’s President Xi, who will be given a state dinner. The president says he is also facing a “big decision” regarding Iran:

“Do I want to go in and annihilate them or do I not?” he told Axios. “It’s a big decision. Anything could happen with me.”

What will happen? “It’s within [Trump’s] power to take the fight to the Iranian regime,” Matthew Continetti writes at Free Expression (“How Trump Can Solve His Yemen Problem“):

It’s impossible to sustain support for a war when the public believes that its government isn’t dictating events but responding to them. …

By taking the offensive, President Trump can shift the focus of attention from America’s perceived vulnerabilities to Iran’s actual deterioration. The first step is to bring the Saudis, Israelis and Emiratis together to prevent the Houthis from consolidating their position. Then, lend rhetorical and material support to Iranians willing to fight their government. Send the Iranian leadership back to the bunkers by taking out communications networks, transportation hubs, state institutions and symbols of the regime. Direct military and intelligence officials to form a plan for Iran’s next popular uprising.

Hoo boy. Streamer and sometime surrogate for Michigan Senate hopeful, Abdul El-Sayed Hasan, Piker apparently has no plans to hide his light under a bushel until November 3. This is making Democrats nervous. New York Post columnist Isaac Schorr explains why:

With a little under seven weeks to go until the midterms, Democratic campaign surrogate and professional meathead Hasan Piker just committed a costly “Kinsley gaffe.”

That is, he told the truth about what he and the ascendant wing of his party believe.

During a disastrous sit-down with Axios’ Alex Thompson, the journalist reminded the meticulously manicured Twitch streamer that he had once deemed the United States “the top dog in terrorism” before asking: “Do you think America, then, is worse than al Qaeda?”

“Pound-for-pound, as far as the number of deaths, yes. We have caused tremendous terror all around the world,” replied Piker.

Piker’s “pound-for-pound” remark made the cover of the New York Post. “With Friends Like These” is the headline, presenting pals Piker and Michigan Senate hopeful Abdul El-Sayed as the friends. Here is the original Axios interview, and here is a follow-up Axios story that has Piker hoping to campaign for AOC in 2028 and Dems running for cover. It should be mentioned that Piker also said that the Middle East would be “more stable” if Iran had nuclear weapons.

All eyes, meanwhile, are on the midterms. Democrats are wildly optimistic, but Hugh Hewitt suggests that they might come to regret several primary choices, including Abdul El-Sayed (who nevertheless wowed elected Democrats in Capitol Hill meetings this week) in Michigan, and James Talarico in Texas. Veteran political reporter Michael Barone writes that it looks as if both parties are trying to lose:

If Republicans’ weakness is the self-indulgence of a second-term president, Democrats’ weakness is their propensity to embrace the wildest and least popular impulses of their political left.

The Wall Street Journal’s Kimberley Strassel writes that the GOP is missing an opportunity: they should take greater pains to declare Democrats “the shutdown party.” Byron York writes about Trump, good economic news, and the midterm election:

Did you know that just-released Census Bureau statistics show the poverty rate in the United States fell to a record low in 2025? That’s an extraordinary development, but it has so far not attracted a lot of media coverage or discussion.

What about a big White House event featuring President Donald Trump touting a welcome decline in poverty and an increase in income? There hasn’t been one. “I dunno, but if I were president and the poverty rate dropped to the LOWEST RATE ON RECORD, I might make a big deal out of it — a lot bigger deal than the Trump White House is making,” commentator Mickey Kaus, who has been covering poverty and social policy for decades, remarked on Wednesday.

One more note — the Census Bureau also announced that real median household income in 2025 was $87,460, an increase of $2,250 from the year before and “the highest on record dating back to 1967.” So Trump could brag about the highest income and the lowest poverty on record. …

Vice President JD Vance almost got there in a podcast interview this week in which he pointed out the administration’s accomplishments, argued that electing Democrats to control Congress would undo that progress, and asked voters for more time to work on the things that are not going well.

“We’ve had an amazing success with the border, with immigration,” Vance said on the All In podcast. “We’ve pursued H-1B reform that prioritizes American workers over foreign nationals. There’s a lot of good that’s been done, but there’s a lot of work left to do. Don’t give power to the people who caused the problems that we’re fixing. Give us another chance, or give us another couple of years, to continue to work on the amazing things that we’ve been doing for the past two years.”

It’s never a great idea for a second-term administration, even with the unusual circumstances of the Trump second term, to ask for “another chance” at election time. … There is still a high probability that voters won’t buy that one, either — a number of key indicators look terrible for Republicans — but it’s the best the Trump administration can do. And the new poverty and household income statistics help them make the case.

Because we can’t face the magnitude of the debt crisis, calls to address the coming Social Security shortfall are generally unheeded. But the Dems stole a march, and the Republicans preemptively surrender on Social Security reform, according to Joseph Sternberg in the Wall Street Journal.

Well, that’s a very good way of putting it. “The lobby at war with learning: teachers unions serve no one but themselves” is the argument in a nutshell for Joel Kotkin’s Unherd story on education unions:

A recent federal survey suggests the share of Americans at the lowest levels of literacy has now reached 28%, up from 19% a decade ago. With the support of the unions, many schools have abandoned phonics and tried-and-tested approaches for teaching literacy in favor of “whole -language” and other trendy theories; 60% of American fourth-graders are poor readers. As the usually true-blue Atlantic put it, “declining standards and low expectations are destroying American education.”

The biggest losers here tend to be minorities. Recent California testing results show that only a third of Latino students meet or exceed English-language standards, and fewer than one in four exceeds the standards for math. Nearly 70% of black students failed to meet state standards for English Language Arts in the 2021-2022 school year, while about 84% didn’t meet math standards. It can’t be the press of too many students that’s causing this decline; California is expected to lose 1 million more students in the next five years.

Don’t Miss. Cleta Mitchell is profiled at RCP as the “Mother of the SAVE” Act. You probably know Ms. Mitchell as a prominent conservative election law and campaign finance lawyer. Well-deserved praise.

“Why is the Church of England fawning over a hardline Muslim?” asks Brendan O’Neill on Spiked Online. The award, supposedly to commemorate religious reconciliation and 9/11, is named for Hubert Walter, a former holder of Mullaly’s job. Walter’s form of reconciliation, it might be observed, was to go on the Third Crusade with his pal, Richard the Lionheart.

PS. The award was withdrawn after the recipient’s praise of Osama Bin Laden came to light. Big oopsie.

Fed Hikes Interest Rate. Warsh Compared to Volcker. Will There Be a Minnesota Midterm Miracle? Rove: Why I’m Voting for a Texas Democrat. Risk-Averse Society. Macklemore. And More

Posted on September 17, 2026September 17, 2026 by Charlotte Hays

After much perfervid speculation, they did it. In a unanimous vote, the Federal Reserve hiked the interest rate for the first time in three years. According to a Wall Street Journal editorial, this action marks new Fed Chairman Kevin Warsh as “an inflation hawk”:

Has Elizabeth Warren sent her apology yet? We mean the letter to Kevin Warsh saying she was wrong to say the new Federal Reserve Chairman wouldn’t be independent. After Wednesday’s decision by the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) to raise interest rates a quarter point, she isn’t the only one who should be offering mea culpas.

The herd of independent minds in the Fed press corps spent the summer hyping a supposed staring contest between Mr. Warsh and President Trump, with the Fed’s credibility as the stakes. Mr. Trump famously prefers lower rates, as does any elected politician if we’re honest. The FOMC’s decisions to stand pat at Mr. Warsh’s first two meetings as its leader became supposed evidence that Fed credibility was in doubt.

It was a silly argument, and it obscured much more consequential developments at the Fed. Mr. Warsh is the most hawkish chairman since Paul Volcker, with a long record in our pages and elsewhere of explaining his views. … No doubt Wall Street and the press will have trouble dropping their speculation about Mr. Warsh’s relationship with Mr. Trump.

For the time being, President Trump, who mercilessly badgered former Fed Chair Jerome Powell to lower interest rates, has contented himself with blaming a “hostile board” for the hikes. Larry Kudlow stressed that the hikes come amid signs of economic growth:

So let me repeat an old supply-side saw, growth is not inflationary. Especially this kind of business-led growth. Manufacturing profits are soaring. Of course, profits are the mothers’ milk of stocks and the lifeblood of the economy. And that can’t possibly be inflationary.

What does the interest rate hike mean for us? Among other things, it will affect car loans, credit cards, and mortgages.

Why did it take the strenuous efforts of Senator Chuck Grassley, 93, to finally pry open FBI files on the nearly successful assassination attempt on President Trump in Butler, Pa.? Miranda Devine addresses the secrecy of the Biden FBI, highlighting the news that an anonymous donor paid for gunman Thomas Crooks’ suspiciously quick cremation.

Iran Update. “Iran’s Attempts to Get Around the Hormuz Blockade Are Hitting a Wall.” Seems that “while Saudi Arabia and others find workarounds, bottlenecks are threatening Iran’s economy.”

Polls. Despite their faults, we’re addicted. Doug Schoen and Carly Cooperman write that Dems have an edge for the midterms but shouldn’t uncork the champers yet. “Preference Cascade in Minnesota” is how Powerline describes a stunning new poll:

The race for governor shows the biggest shift. In a classic turnout suppression poll, last month KSTP showed now U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar ahead of state Speaker of the House Lisa Demuth 52-36. The latest numbers have Klobuchar ahead 47-40, a nine-point shift in just four weeks.

…

The race for the open U.S. Senate seat, sitting Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan (D) and Michelle Tafoya (R) are tied 42-42, a five-point shift in favor of Tafoya.

“Too Good to Check: A Virtual Dead Heat in Minnesota?” is Ed Morrissey’s Hot Air take on the poll. Uh-oh: Karl Rove explains why he is voting for a Democrat in Texas in the midterms. Can you guess who? It’s NOT the guy whose prophetic Lesbian minister predicts he’ll abandon his recent rightward shift (and return to tasty tofu?) the second it’s safe. More on Mail-in Ballots: “Brett Kavanaugh, President Donald Trump’s “hero” Supreme Court justice, isn’t closing the door on the United States Postal Service (USPS) enacting Trump’s ballot-mail rules in the future, although he agreed with the majority that implementing them ahead of the 2026 midterm elections is too soon.”

Closing the Door on Risk. “The Zero-Risk Society Has Arrived,” writes the Wall Street Journal’s Barton Swaim:

America’s global economic dominance, achieved in the 1950s and enduring still, is largely thanks to the young country’s risk-welcoming ethos. The few provisions that shielded economic actors from ruin in the 19th century—bankruptcy protections, limited-liability laws—didn’t deter risk-taking but encouraged it.

Then came the New Deal’s dramatic expansion of the welfare state. …

And bear in mind, [author of a new study on risk Allison] Schrager says, the reason millennials carry that debt in the first place: because politicians starting in the ’80s presented college as a risk-free road to financial security. Federal and state governments made loans easy, borrowers felt less price sensitivity and colleges responded rationally by bumping up tuition. “When college is touted as a ticket to a certain lifestyle,” she writes, “it seems smart to agree to almost any price tag and any amount of debt.”

An idyllic English village, Piddington, has just taken the risk of voting to secede from the UK. It’s a symbolic vote, but it indicates that England’s middle classes are awakening to the “lunacy of illegal immigration”:

So long as our leaders believe that their obligations to men who have broken into the country trump the democratic wishes and safety of citizens, the asylum crisis will continue. But Piddington’s declaration of independence remains a stunning rebuke to a government whose latest genius solution is to spread the problem out a little more evenly.

The British people’s revolt against open-borders lunacy is growing. The aggy working classes led the way, and the irked middle classes might finally be catching up. The Waitrose mums. The Stone Island dads. The Pink Ladies in Epping. The Ladies of Piddington. If they ever got themselves together, they might just save Britain.

“Macklemore Is No Free-Speech Martyr” is the headline of Karol Markowicz’s excellent Free Expression piece on the controversy surrounding Macklemore’s unhinged rant that resulted in his being dropped from an Ed Sheeran tour. Since Karol does a great job of making the point, I’ll just quote her description of the original incident for those who missed it:

Wearing a keffiyeh, a scarf associated with the Palestinian cause, Macklemore chanted to free Palestine and thanked a bunch of anti-Israel groups before adding: “So I say free Palestine, I say free Lebanon, I say free Cuba, I say free Congo, free Sudan, I say free all people in America living in fear of this terrorist organization, ICE. None of us will be free until we are all free.”

Macklemore made sure to note he had no problems with Jews as people. But Jews could be forgiven for doubting that. In 2014 Macklemore dressed up in a costume that seemed an obvious Jewish caricature, complete with a prosthetic nose. He explained his offense hadn’t been intentional. But no real apology was forthcoming.

Bethany Mandel also has a good piece (“Nobody Owes Macklemore a Stadium“) in the Examiner. Meanwhile, stadium owner Robert Kraft outwitted Macklemore.

“Full Hearts, Closed Minds,” by Free Expression columnist Matthew Hennessey, also addresses the Macklemore fracas and the lack of political diversity among artists (and artistes). Hennessey has some interesting observations on the Kennedy Center and the response of the “artistic community” to Trump’s name on the building. The Kennedy Center could be “ripped down” imminently, President Trump says, because he refuses to rescue it financially unless he gets credit. It does seem rather a shame, despite the KC’s expensive tickets and ugly Edward Durrell Stone building.

What? What? What book did John Quincy Adams believe all Americans should read to be good citizens? What is the one thing you should never do when the scammers come for your money?